Leave Me Lost in a Far-Off Land
by burnmedown
Summary: Spenser's head snaps to the side. He tumbles off the edge of the rock and into the river below. Only then does Ray hear the shot.
1. Chapter 1

"This," Sonny announces, "is the junglest goddamn jungle I have ever seen."

Ray sighs and makes a half-hearted attempt to brush away the sweat bees and mosquitos congregating on his arm. He's stopped even bothering with the leeches crawling up his legs.

Sonny, who apparently hasn't, swats wildly at his ankle. "How come they even got leeches on dry land anyway? I thought those were supposed to stay in the water!"

"Around here, is there really that much difference between being on land and being in the water?" Clay asks wryly.

"That is a good point, Tinker Bell," Sonny says, then swears fluently because one of the leeches is now attached to his finger and he can't get it off.

For once, Ray can't entirely blame Sonny for all the complaining. Their current mission has taken them to the most humid place he has ever been. Every member of Bravo team is absolutely soaked in sweat that won't dry. Breathing feels like trying to inhale warm soup.

The environment is so extreme that it's made Trent paranoid. He brought double his usual supply of antibiotics, even though they're only supposed to be in the jungle for a few days.

"If you get a scrape," Trent told them before the mission, "it will get infected. If you _don't_ get a scrape, a spontaneous infection might just pop up anyway."

Sonny accused him of making that up, so Trent googled photos of cellulitis and tropical ulcers for proof, at which point everyone scattered.

Now, on day one of what should be a three-day mission, they're hiking across unforgiving terrain toward the spot where they're supposed to eliminate an influential, evasive terrorist.

Mandy and her people have been after Bakar Abdhir for years, continually frustrated by his uncanny ability to stay off the grid. The extremist has been responsible for at least a dozen significant attacks in three different countries.

With the help of local assets, Mandy finally tracked him here, to his hiding spot in a mountainous rainforest so remote that it seems like the perfect place for nearly anyone, or anything, to disappear.

The thing about this region, though, is that it's damn near impassable. A broad, roaring whitewater river slices through the valley; from its banks, the mountains rise almost straight up. Hiking is slow and miserable, and in some places nearly impossible due to gorges, cliffs, and swift tributary streams that tumble like waterfalls down the mountainsides.

The only reliable avenue of travel is the river, and the only people who know the river well enough to navigate it and survive are local natives. They love their home. They're protective of it. They don't like sharing it with violent outsiders.

As soon as they figured out who it was they'd been hired to transport upriver, they wanted him gone. That's where Bravo Team comes in.

Mandy's local asset managed to pinpoint the date when Abdhir would be traveling downriver. Between his current location and intended destination lies a passage of whitewater so crowded with jagged rocks that not even the locals will attempt it; the only way past is to portage the outboard motor-equipped canoe. It's a slow, tedious process … and a perfect opportunity.

When Abdhir arrives, accompanied by the trusted lieutenant/bodyguard he is never without, Bravo will be waiting across the river to take them both out.

The distance between Bravo's target location and the spot where they were dropped off by boat isn't even that great, but the terrain is so unforgiving that they hike for nearly three hours before reaching their destination. Shortly after they set up camp in the jungle, a safe distance from the volatile river, darkness drops like a curtain.

Ray has been near the equator before. He always finds the complete lack of twilight disorienting at first.

The next morning, after dawn arrives just as suddenly as the darkness had the night before, Jason and Sonny take the first shift watching the river. Bravo knows the target is supposed to be moving today, but they don't know at what time.

Ray spends the morning lying in his hammock, hoping for a breeze that never comes, and miserably failing to sleep. The only bright side he can come up with is that at least the hammock is keeping him away from the leeches for the moment. Also, it hasn't rained in more than 12 hours, which feels like a small miracle.

When morning fades to afternoon and Sonny and Jason's shift gives way to Ray and Spenser's, Ray actually feels relieved. Maybe out on the rock, near the river, the air will be at least a little less stuffy. He prays for that small mercy, because praying is a reflex he still has, at least for now.

Bravo's chosen FFP is a huge slab of rock across the river from the portage route. The front half of the boulder juts out over the water; the back half sits under a tree that trails hanging vines, offering both decent concealment and a clear line of sight to the target location.

Spenser looks about as frazzled as Ray feels, his fair skin dotted with swelling mosquito bites, but after they clamber up onto the rock and settle under the vines, it doesn't take him long to cheer up. Ray's small prayer is answered: there's a bit of a breeze coming off the water, cooling the air and making it easier to breathe. Which apparently makes Spenser feel talkative.

Ray half-tunes him out, thinking about prayers and the answering thereof. Thinking about how hard it's been to cling to faith lately, and how he has resolved to draw strength from his faith in the things he _knows -_ his family, his brothers - while waiting to find his way back to God. (Or not, if that's how it turns out.)

After a while, Ray tunes back in as Spenser is saying, "You know, the drainage basin for this river isn't even that big. It's just that it rains so damn much here. Depending on precipitation, the river can rise or fall nearly 30 feet in less than 24 hours."

Ray gives him a look, eyebrows raised. Spenser just grins. "What? I read. And it's a good idea to research your terrain. You know, so you don't camp 20 feet from the river and then wake up dead."

"Fair point," Ray concedes.

For a minute, all is quiet but for birdsong, rushing water, and the incessant background hum of mosquitos orbiting their heads. Then Clay says, "Did you know that clouded leopards can have tails up to three feet long?"

Ray snorts a quiet, contained laugh. "Thank you, Animal Planet."

"Hey, it's a good idea to research-"

"Local wildlife," Ray interrupts, "so that when a leopard eats you, you'll at least know how long its tail is?"

Now Clay snickers too, covering his mouth to muffle the noise.

Sound doesn't travel far here, thanks to the river, the humidity, the impossibly dense vegetation, the narrow canyons and the relative lack of wind. In one sense, it's reassuring; as long as they keep their voices down, they're unlikely to give away their presence.

On the other hand, they're also unlikely to hear any potential trouble coming before it reaches them.

Ray glances at his watch. Spenser asks, "Boat check time?"

"Yep. Your turn."

Keeping low, Clay worms farther out onto the great slab of stone that juts out over the river. At the edge of the overhang, which is the only place that offers a clear long-range view, he flattens himself to the rock, looks upstream, downstream, then sits up, glancing back to shake his head.

"Nothing?" Ray asks.

"Nope. No sign of-"

Spenser's head snaps to the side in a cloud of red mist. His arms jerk out reflexively. He tumbles off the edge of the rock and into the river below.

Only then does Ray hear the shot.

There's a split second of airless shock that freezes him in place. Then he scuttles backward, bullets pinging off stone around him, and yells into his radio, "Contact! We're taking fire!"

The shots are coming from across the river, downward and at an angle. The tango has to be in a tree, hidden somewhere in the towering, impenetrable rainforest canopy.

Every instinct tells Ray to lunge forward, to go after his brother, but he can't help Spenser if he's dead. He retreats farther under the flimsy cover of the vines, staying as flat against the rock as he can, preparing for the drop he knows is coming.

An instant before he rolls off the back of the boulder to the sandy gravel below, heat spears through his side below the vest.

Ray loses time, comes back to find himself sprawled on his back, staring up at the narrow slits of sky visible between vines and branches. His ribs throb. His side feels wet. Jason is yelling in his ear.

Spenser is gone.

Now that Ray is out of sight, the shots have stopped, at least for the moment. It will take them time to cross the river - assuming they don't already have someone on this side, which is a dangerous assumption to make.

Jason is still talking, practically begging for a response. Ray pushes himself up on one elbow. "Yeah, boss, I'm here."

"_Sitrep?"_

"I'm injured but ambulatory. Six is … Six is down."

"_Copy, Bravo Two. Headed to you."_

"Roger that. Be advised, there's at least one sniper in the trees across the river. Maintain cover."

Ray drags himself up to his knees, pressing a hand to his side. Blood trickles between his fingers.

Naima is going to be mad at him.

Using the boulder for support, Ray pushes to his feet and edges around the spire of rock, making sure to stay concealed, ducking beneath branches and dangling vines. Near the edge of the river, he crouches clumsily behind a slab of jagged stone, peering through a crack at the foaming rapids, at the rocks poking up like spikes between them. This close to the river, the roar is deafening.

There's no sign of Clay. He hadn't really expected there to be.

Ray looks at the water. He thinks, _Dear God, _and then can't come up with any prayer except just _Please._

Nothing.

Blinking against the burn in his eyes, Ray retreats back around the boulder and lets himself be swallowed up by the rich green gloom of the jungle.

He doesn't make it far into the foliage before his team finds him. As soon as he sees their faces, his knees give out. Jason lunges forward to catch him. Ray lets his head fall against Jason's shoulder, listening to the rumble of his best friend's voice as he calls for Trent's help.

"Where's Spenser?" Sonny asks with a hint of panic.

Ray looks up. He says, "I'm sorry." His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

Sonny shakes his head, puts out a hand to brace himself against a tree. "No. Goddammit, no."

"The sniper-" Ray sucks in a breath as Trent presses a bandage to his side. "The sniper got him. He fell into the river." He closes his eyes, unable to bear seeing their faces when he tells them the next part. "It was a headshot."

"Jesus," Sonny whispers.

"I looked for him," Ray tells them. It seems important that they know that. "I went down to the water, but he wasn't…"

"We know," Jason says, cupping his hands around the back of Ray's head so he can look him in the eyes. "You did everything you could." He's in leader mode, calm and collected. Ray knows it won't hit him until later.

When Trent confirms that Ray is okay to move, Jason pulls him to his feet and hauls him back toward camp so they can collect essentials and haul ass downstream before any more surprises can catch up with them.

* * *

Eric Blackburn often finds that the waiting around is the most frustrating part of missions like this one.

He, Mandy and Davis have been hovering in limbo for hours, just waiting for the report that the target's boat has finally appeared. It's a blend of boredom and tension that they're all much too familiar with.

Finally, mid-afternoon local time, Master Chief Hayes says, "_Bravo One to HAVOC."_

He sounds out of breath. It's the first small hint that something has gone badly wrong.

"Copy, Bravo One."

"_The mission is blown. Looks like we were set up. We're moving toward exfil. Bravo Two is injured, and we've, uh, we've lost Bravo Six."_

Davis sits down suddenly. Mandy exhales like she's been kicked in the lung.

Eric allows himself the luxury of closing his eyes, just for an instant, and breathing in, out. From the way Hayes sounds, Blackburn can guess roughly what went down, but he needs the team leader to be more specific. "What happened?"

"_Sniper from across the river got Bravo Two and Six while they were on watch. Two was hit in the side. He's stable, but given the environment, infection could become an issue. Bravo Six, uh, he took a headshot and went into the river. We couldn't locate him."_

Jesus.

What should have been a relatively straightforward mission has just turned into a clusterfuck.

Eric glances over to see Mandy with her phone jammed against her ear, demanding that someone _Find out what the hell just happened, because not only did we not get Abdhir, we sent a team of Navy SEALs into a goddamn ambush!_

She doesn't add _And got one of them killed, _but when her eyes meet Blackburn's, he can tell she's thinking it.

Eric's gut twists at the thought of the situation that Bravo Team is in. They need to get the hell out of that jungle. Doing so will mean leaving Clay behind.

Hayes must know, just as well as Eric does, what it means when a man gets shot in the head, falls into whitewater rapids, and disappears. Realistically, Clay Spenser is dead … but they can't _know_ that_,_ not with absolute certainty_._ There's no closure, and as long as there isn't, the 'maybe' will be eating at them. No matter how slim the odds.

Blackburn hates himself a little for thinking it would almost be better if they had a body.

Hayes doesn't ask to stay and search for Spenser. He confirms that he's moving his team, what's left of it, toward the spot where two canoes and a small group of local pilots sit concealed in the deep jungle, waiting to take Bravo back downriver.

There's no QRF for this mission. No medevac. Hell, it's not even possible to land a helo anywhere in that terrain. It should have been fine. Shouldn't have even been an issue.

Shit.

Spenser deserved better.

Blackburn turns to Davis. "Get ISR downstream. See if you can find him."

"On it." Davis's voice is steady. It occurs to Eric, not for the first time, that she's gonna make one hell of an officer.

Luck is on their side in one sense: the last day has contained surprisingly little rainfall, leaving the river, though still formidable, a bit clearer and calmer than usual. That luck is unlikely to hold out for long. Outside of its brief six-week dry season, the area almost never goes more than 36 hours without significant precipitation.

Even with its water level unusually low, the river is still a mess of jagged rocks, powerful rapids, and underwater nooks a body could wash into and never leave. The stark, awful truth is that Spenser will most likely never be seen again.

They'll do the best they can. It probably won't be enough for anything more than an empty coffin.

* * *

Jason Hayes narrows his focus to the situation at hand, to what he can control right now.

His 2IC is hurt. Trent says the wound is a through-and-through, but Ray is in pain and has lost enough blood to weaken him. They're 90 mikes into the hike, and with Brock's help Ray is still going, stubbornly lifting his feet and putting them down, but he looks terrible.

In this godforsaken jungle, an injury like Ray's can go very bad, very fast. They need to get him downriver, out of the mountains, so that he can be evacuated to a hospital.

"Jason," Sonny says, for about the fourth time. His voice is unsteady. Jason isn't sure whether it's more that he's angry or that he's fighting tears. With Sonny, it can be hard to tell.

"Not now, Son," Jason responds, also for about the fourth time.

"Goddammit, Jace!"

Anger, then.

"We can't just _leave_ him!"

Jason's carefully crafted laser focus breaks. He spins and grabs Sonny's arm to pull him away from the others. "What do you want to do, Sonny? You want to lose Ray too? Because if we don't get him out of here, we might."

"Trent said it's not-"

"Trent said something about infections, too. You remember that? Remember what he told us about scrapes? What do you think is gonna happen to a gunshot wound?"

Sonny shuts his mouth. His eyes glisten, and he looks away.

"Look." Jason drops his voice to a whisper. "We're gonna get Ray to exfil, okay? We're gonna make sure he gets out of here. Then maybe you and me, we'll go back to look for Clay."

"Okay," Sonny says, steadier. He nods. "Okay."

They get moving again, fast as they can given the terrain and Ray's injury. So far, there's been no sign of pursuit - not that they'd likely notice any until the tangos were right on top of them.

Jason tries to wrestle his focus back to the task at hand, but his brain has grown a thicket of conflicting thoughts. One: Sonny is right; they can't just leave their brother behind like he's nothing, like he never mattered at all. Two: Going back might get them killed, and it's probably pointless. If Sonny were thinking straight, he'd know that too.

On foot, they haven't got a hope of conducting anything more than a pointless, cursory search. Taking a boat might give them better odds, but it would also be a damn good way of making sure they get tagged from the riverbank.

Jason's skin crawls at the thought of getting back in the boats at all, risking their lives on the bet that Abdhir doesn't have anyone stationed downriver just waiting to pick them off. Their only choice is to chance it, but boating back upriver to look for Clay? That would be straight-up suicide. He can't lose anybody else today. He won't.

Even if they did take the other canoe back upstream, and even if they did survive doing so, they probably still wouldn't find anything. Rivers like this, they tend to keep what they take.

Jason's mind goes round and round in circles for the rest of the hike, and then they reach their destination and all his thoughts fade away into a blank hiss of static.

In slow motion, he reaches for his radio. "Bravo One to HAVOC," he says. "Uh, we've got a problem. Our boats are gone."

* * *

_Before, somewhere upriver:_

_Clay Spenser crawls out of the river onto a narrow strip of silty gravel. He coughs up water. His head throbs; his vision fades in and out. He can't stop shaking. He finds his Glock strapped to his waist, but his radio is gone._

_He doesn't know where he is. Only that he's alone, and it isn't safe here._

_He drags himself to his feet and stumbles into the jungle._


	2. Chapter 2

With few other options, Bravo Team keeps moving downriver, hoping to at least stay ahead of any pursuers.

The canoes are gone, as are all the men who had been enlisted to pilot them. Ray figures there are three possibilities: the locals were killed by Abdhir's guys; they were in on it from the beginning; or somebody warned them what was going down, and they took off.

He hopes for option three. The locals didn't ask for any of this. They have their own belief system, their own way of life, and all they want is to be left alone to live it.

In the late afternoon, a storm hits. The rain is brief but comes down like a waterfall, so heavy that it makes it hard to breathe, makes Ray feel like he might drown. As soon as he thinks that word, _drown,_ he's back to Spenser plunging off that rock, and he wonders if Clay was already dead when he fell. If he had enough awareness left to feel his lungs filling up with water.

Ray decides he doesn't want to think about that anymore. He mostly manages not to.

With Brock's quiet support and the help of the painkillers Trent keeps giving him, Ray stays on his feet until dark; not moving as fast as they need him to, but doing the best he can. Once the sun starts to drop low over the mountains, Jason picks a spot and they make camp, quietly, with no fire. Jason tells them not to use lights during the night unless absolutely necessary.

The rainforest's sheer size is both bad and good. It's bad because it's making it hard as hell for them to get back to civilization. It's good because, so long as they stay clear of the river, it should also be really damn difficult for Abdhir's guys to find them in the hundreds of miles of largely uninhabited wilderness.

After Ray has been re-bandaged, fussed over and helped into his hammock, Sonny comes and sits at the base of a tree near him, tilts his head back, and stares up at where the sky would be if it weren't swallowed up by rainforest canopy.

Eventually, he says, "This one's gonna hurt for a while, ain't it?"

Ray breathes through the pain. "Yeah. I think it will."

Sonny nods, staring straight ahead now, glassy-eyed. "Guess I got used to having him around."

"Me too, brother."

After Nate, after the way they lost him, it took a while. Spenser didn't exactly make it easy at first, either, with his prickly need to prove himself, his confidence that sometimes crossed into arrogance. He's gotten better about that (at least some of the time), and his team has also gotten better about understanding where it comes from: the loneliness; the asshole father whose shadow Clay has had to fight so hard to escape.

"Right before," Ray says, "he was telling me things he'd read about the river. And clouded leopards. How long their tails are."

Sonny exhales a laugh, sucks the breath back in as a sob. He swipes his sleeve across his eyes. "Jesus, that kid is a nerd."

"He kind of is, isn't he?"

Their use of present tense for Clay is a small, deliberate act of defiance. They'll have to give it up eventually, but not today. Today, he was _just here._ They have some of his gear with them. He still feels real.

It'll take a while for that to fade. Especially if they never get the closure of being able to bring him home.

"On the way up here, he was tellin' me about the villages we were passing," Sonny says. "How durn near every one of 'em has a different language than the last. Some folks up here speak three or four separate languages, but not a one that would be understood anywhere on earth except this river." He leans his head back against the tree, smiles a wobbly smile. "I told him he might as well learn some of 'em, since he already speaks everything else. He said he'd get right on that."

Ray tries to swallow past the grief clogging his throat. He feels crushed beneath the unbearable weight of all the years of Clay Spenser's unlived life: languages he won't learn, battles he won't fight. It's Nate all over again, and too many brothers before Nate. It doesn't get easier. If anything, it might be getting harder.

After a while, Sonny gets up and squeezes Ray's shoulder. "You hang in there, you hear me?"

"Copy that."

Once Sonny is in his own hammock, the camp goes quiet. In the heavy darkness, the jungle sounds settle over them like a weight. Nightbirds sing. Monkeys quarrel in treetops. Ray's side throbs under the clean bandages Trent applied before sunset. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep, and tries not to think about anything but Naima and his babies, and the way that their faces will light up when they see him again.

During the night, it rains again. Ray passes out at some point, then wakes up disoriented in the dark, soaking wet, his teeth chattering with cold. His bones hurt. Every heartbeat sends a stab of hot agony through his side.

"Trent," he whispers, his voice a shallow croak. "Trent…"

Ray hears stirring. A hand lands gently on his forehead, and then Trent swears quietly.

"You're running a pretty high fever," the medic says softly, in the very calm tone he uses when things are not going well. He clicks on a small light, shielding it with his hand, and checks Ray's wound. There's just enough illumination to see his expression when he catches sight of it.

"That bad, huh?" Ray can't stop shivering, even though moving hurts.

Trent quickly smooths his expression back to neutral. "I'll put you on a second antibiotic. Hopefully that will help us get ahead of the infection." There's a clear apology in his voice when he adds, "I need to clean out the wound again."

And it's gonna hurt, and Ray has to stay quiet anyway. He knows how this goes.

"Just do it," he whispers.

God must still love him at least a little, because he mercifully passes out again before Trent is done.

* * *

In the pale gray dawn, Jason jolts awake to the sound of gunshots upriver.

_Bang. _Pause. _Bang. Bang._

Silence.

Sonny looks back from where he's crouched at the edge of their camp. "Jason," he breathes.

"I know."

"Jason, that was-"

"I know."

Sonny just stares at him with a sort of quiet, hollow-eyed desperation.

Jason says into the radio, "Bravo One to HAVOC."

"_Go for HAVOC."_

"We've heard some gunfire from upriver. Three shots. Sounded like a Glock. Like maybe Bravo Six's gun."

Blackburn doesn't answer right away. He must know, just as well as Jason does, that the most likely scenario here is that either it's a coincidence, or Abdhir's men found Clay's body and are now using his gun in an attempt to draw out the rest of the team.

Blackburn also likely understands that none of that actually matters.

"_Good copy. What's your course of action?"_

"Shots were pretty clear. Sound doesn't carry well here, so they couldn't have been coming from all that far away." Jason chews at his lip. "I'm thinking we'd better check it out."

"_It's your call, Bravo One,"_ Blackburn responds, a hint of resignation in his tone.

"Copy. Will report back if we find anything."

Brock and Trent are awake, but Ray is still sleeping. "You need to stay with him?" Jason asks Trent.

The medic hesitates. "His fever's down. Breathing's good. I think he's okay for now. Brock, think you can handle keeping an eye on him?"

Brock nods, propping his foot up on a log with a stifled wince that Jason doesn't mention, but tucks away in his mind for later. Whatever it is, it can't be too serious or he would have mentioned it already.

"Anything moves that ain't us, you shoot first and ask questions later," Sonny tells Brock, who, taciturn as ever, just responds with a slight smile.

The morning sun filters through the trees in latticed stripes. Steam rises off the forest floor. Brightly colored birds flit from branch to branch. It's the sort of place that would look beautiful in a children's book; the reality is significantly less idyllic.

It doesn't take long for the search to get frustrating. They're navigating based on their best guess of where the shots were coming from, which might work out all right if there were even a little long-range visibility, which there isn't. The trio ends up wandering through bamboo thickets, past walls of flowering vines, and through spaces crowded with trees so massive that Jason feels like Jack looking up at the beanstalk.

There's no sound but for the cacophony of rainforest noises, and no sign of anything out of place.

Jason thinks about Brock and Ray back at camp, and wonders if he should have left them there alone. His neck itches with a nagging sense of unease that's probably unfounded but that he can't shake anyway. After maybe half an hour of absolutely nothing, he pulls up and turns to Sonny.

"No," the Texan says immediately.

"Sonny…"

"Twenty more minutes. Please. Jason, _please."_

Jason sighs. "Fine. But then we head back, you understand?"

"Roger that, boss," Sonny says, with a shifty expression that makes Jason suspect there will be further arguing once the twenty mikes are up.

They trudge through another bamboo patch, soupy mud sucking at their boots. Sonny is the first to break through into the small open space on the other side. He freezes in place.

Jason follows Sonny's gaze to the other side of the clearing, where Clay Spenser is sitting in a patch of orchids.

He's wet and muddy, blond hair matted with blood. His back is propped against the trunk of a massive tree, head tilted back, eyes closed. He doesn't move.

Jason's mood flips rapidly from elation to fear, because they've found Spenser, but he doesn't look alive.

What if it's a trap?

Sonny surges forward, ignoring Jason's hissed warning, and drops to his knees at Clay's side. "Spense?" His voice shakes. "Hey. Wake up. We found you, brother. We've got you. Come on." He touches Clay's shoulder, then gently pries the Glock from his teammate's lax grip.

Before Trent has a chance to check for a pulse, Clay rolls his head to the side and groans weakly. His eyelids crack open. He stares up at Sonny's face.

"Ow," he mumbles.

Sonny's laugh is higher-pitched than usual. "You got a headache there, Goldilocks?"

Clay starts to nod, winces. "Yeah." His voice comes out hoarse, and his breathing sounds labored. He must have nearly drowned. The fact that he didn't is a straight-up goddamn miracle.

"Hey, Clay," Trent says softly. "Can you look at me? I need to check your eyes, okay?"

Clay looks. When Trent flashes the light across his pupils, Spenser whines like a kicked puppy and grabs Sonny's arm, leaning his head against the Texan's shoulder.

"Sorry, sorry." Trent clicks off the light and carefully runs his fingers through Clay's matted hair to find the wound.

"What have we got?" Jason asks.

"He's lucky. Bullet didn't penetrate. It did take off a chunk of his scalp, though, and he's lost some blood. Skull might be fractured, but there's no displacement. He's got a pretty bad concussion. Clay, can you tell me where you are?"

Clay squints at Trent, opening his eyes just a sliver, probably worried that the light will come back. "Um," he says. "Jungle."

Trent smiles a little. "In what country?"

Clay's eyebrows scrunch together. "Not sure."

"Okay. Can you tell me what you were shooting at earlier?" When Clay gives him a blank look, Trent explains, "You fired your sidearm. That's how we found you."

Spenser shakes his head a little. "I … don't know. Can't remember. Sorry."

"Hey, that's okay," Trent lies calmly. "Can you tell me your name?"

Clay looks mildly annoyed now. "Uh, yeah. It's Clay Spenser."

"How about his name?" Trent tips his head toward Sonny, whose sleeve Clay probably doesn't even realize he's still holding. Sonny has his other arm wrapped around Clay's shoulders, possibly as much for his own reassurance as to keep his brother upright.

"Sonny," Spenser says, then adds, eyes sliding closed, "Quinn."

"That's good, Clay." Sonny's tone is about as gentle as Jason has ever heard from him. "You're doin' great."

Clay huffs, clearly not buying it, but doesn't argue. He leaves his head resting against Sonny's shoulder while Trent takes his pulse, listens to his breathing, then rises and pulls Jason aside to give him the full verdict.

"He's about as stable as could be expected for now. Respiration is a little rough from the water, but I think his lungs are okay. Main concern is the head injury. If he's bleeding into his brain, there's not a damn thing we can do about it out here."

"Got it. Bottom line?"

"He needs to be in a hospital, boss."

"Copy that." As Trent goes back to Clay, Jason turns away and says into his radio, "Bravo One to HAVOC."

"_Go for HAVOC,"_ Blackburn responds immediately.

"We've got Bravo Six. He's alive." Serious as the situation still is, Jason can't help the smile that finds its way into his voice.

"_Good copy, Bravo One. Glad to hear it."_ Beneath Blackburn's unshakable professionalism, there's a hint of pure relief. "_What's his status?"_

"Significant head injury, but he seems stable for the moment. He's responsive but confused. Bravo Four says he needs medical care ASAP."

"_Understood,"_ Blackburn says. They both know that's not possible right now. Like Ray, Spenser will just have to hang on for as long as he can.

Sonny and Trent pull Clay to his feet. His left knee buckles and he lets out a stifled groan. Only Sonny's quick reflexes keep him from pitching forward.

At Trent's questioning look, Jason shakes his head. Clay doesn't seem to be bleeding from anywhere other than his head, and Jason's antsiness hasn't lessened. He doesn't like being separated from Brock and Ray - especially since, if Bravo could hear the shots Clay fired, it's possible someone else could too.

"Help him keep his weight off that leg," Jason tells Trent. "You can check it when we get back to camp."

"It's okay," Clay says. "I'm okay."

"Sure you are, kid."

Spenser does seem capable of putting at least some weight on the leg, though he looks more and more pained as they walk. By the time they make it back to camp, he's ashen and sweating so much that some of the mud is dripping off his face.

Jason briefly radios ahead to let Brock know they're coming, but doesn't mention who they have with them. When they emerge from the jungle, Brock bolts to his feet like he's been shot out of a cannon and says, "Holy _shit."_

"Clay's not dead!" Sonny announces.

"I see that. Holy shit. Spense, it is good to see you, brother." Brock gets nothing more than an unintelligible, mumbled response from his semiconscious teammate, but he breaks into a wide grin anyway.

While Sonny eases Clay down to a sitting position against a tree so that Trent can check his leg, Jason crosses the camp to kneel beside his 2IC's hammock. Ray is still out, which says a lot about how hard this infection is hitting him.

Jason pats his best friend's shoulder, wincing at the heat he can feel even through Ray's damp shirt. The fever isn't as bad as it was during the night, but it's definitely not gone either, despite the second antibiotic Trent has started him on.

When Ray's eyes open a sliver, Jason leans forward and tells him, "We got somebody here I thought you might want to see."

In Jason Hayes's line of work, there are a lot of bad days and not a lot of miracles. Brothers die and they don't come back. You bury them, or sometimes you bury their empty caskets, and then you go forward and try not to let it eat you alive. And when those rare miracles do happen, you hang onto them as tight as you can.

Jason will never, as long as he lives, forget the look on Ray's face when he sees Spenser, filthy and bedraggled and _alive._

Ray swallows a couple times before he manages to get words out. "He okay?"

"Bullet more or less grazed him. He's got one hell of a concussion, but he's alive and knows his name." Jason squeezes Ray's shoulder. "He's a tough kid. He'll be fine."

Just then, Trent gives a low whistle and says, "Damn, Clay. I guess you didn't miss all those rocks after all." He has found the source of Spenser's sore leg: the kid's entire left thigh is nearly black with bruising. Jason winces just looking at it.

"Nothing broken," Trent concludes after some prodding that makes Clay hiss through gritted teeth, "but it's gonna hurt like hell for a while."

"Oh good," Clay mutters.

With his team finally in one place, back together like they should be, Jason starts thinking longer-term. Ray and Spenser need medical treatment, and the sooner the better. Traveling by river is out. The terrain makes helo extraction impossible. What does that leave?

A call to Blackburn confirms what Jason suspects: that Bravo's only viable option is to continue downriver on foot. Due to the largely impenetrable rainforest canopy, ISR is of limited usefulness in evaluating the terrain and planning a route. HAVOC's best guesstimate is that Bravo may be able to reach the nearest downriver village in two days, if they're lucky. Once there, they can hopefully hire someone with a boat to take them the rest of the way.

That is, of course, if Abdhir's guys aren't already waiting for them there. It's a risk they'll have to take.

Jason stands up. Conversations die off as his team turn to look at him.

"We've got one hell of a hike ahead of us, boys," he says. "Let's get to work."


	3. Chapter 3

Eric and Mandy are tossing ideas back and forth, trying to figure out how the hell they're going to get Bravo out of the mountains, when Hayes unexpectedly calls in. It is barely past sunrise, and his voice sounds both tired and tense.

When Hayes reports the gunfire, says that it sounded like it came from a Glock like the one Clay Spenser was carrying when he went into the river, Mandy goes even paler than usual. She and Eric look at each other for a minute, exchanging the sort of silent communication you develop when you work alongside someone long enough.

Fact one: It's likely a trap, and one that could result in the deaths of the rest of Bravo Team. Losing one is devastating. Losing them all would be unthinkable.

Fact two: Fact one notwithstanding, there is roughly a zero percent chance that they can convince Bravo not to go looking for Clay.

Closing his eyes in resignation, Eric tells Hayes that it's his call, and hopes to God he won't regret not at least trying to give the order to stay put.

They wait for what feels like forever, the tension in the room quietly building as they try not to imagine what could be happening in that godforsaken jungle. Eventually Mandy receives a phone call, exchanges a few terse words with the person on the other end, and returns looking even more harried.

"Well, I guess we know what went wrong," she says bitterly. "My local asset turned up in a field, tortured to death."

Compromised somehow, then tortured until he gave up the mission. Poor bastard.

Of Abdhir himself there has been no sign. Mandy figures he's long gone by now. "Wherever he runs, we'll find him," she vows, but it's hard to forget that she has been trying for years, and this was the first time they've even gotten close.

Davis, who had racked out for a while, returns and gets updated on the situation. She manages to keep her expression mostly blank. Eric can't tell whether she's feeling more hopeful or afraid.

Finally, finally, Hayes checks back in.

They have Spenser. He's alive.

Blackburn closes his eyes and listens to the scattered, tired cheers. Mandy presses the back of her hand against her mouth, eyes glistening. Davis stares intently at the screen in front of her, but can't keep from smiling a little.

"Glad to hear it," Eric tells Hayes, and then the brief moment of letting himself bask in relief is over. Spenser might be, against all odds, alive, but he likely won't stay that way unless his team can get him out to a hospital. The same is true of Ray Perry, whose infection is thus far withstanding everything Trent has tried to throw at it.

After hours of strategizing, evaluating ISR data and bouncing around ideas, all roads lead back to one conclusion: Bravo Team will have to hike out. It's going to be hellish, especially with two of them already badly injured, but it's the only way.

Davis does pass on one piece of good news: once Bravo makes it about halfway to the village, they'll be out of the steepest part of the mountains and will reach terrain that was slashed and burned for dry-land rice fields a few years ago, meaning sparser vegetation now. If they can just get that far, the worst should be behind them; but that 'if' looms large.

Blackburn stares at aerial images of rainforest and rushing water and ravines, and he tells himself that they'll make it. They have to.

* * *

Ray feels better for multiple reasons.

One, his temperature is down and the fire burning in his side has abated, which means the antibiotics must be working; and two, Clay Spenser is alive. Ray keeps glancing over to make sure it wasn't some sort of dream or fever-induced hallucination, and every time, Clay is still there. He doesn't exactly look healthy, but he's breathing, and sometimes his eyes are even open.

After Jason finished talking to HAVOC, clarifying an exfil plan that basically amounts to "Start walking and try not to die," he and the other able-bodied members of Bravo built litters for carrying Ray and Spenser. Jason and Brock have Ray, while Sonny and Trent carry the kid, who drifts in and out of consciousness.

Trent is worried about dehydration - for everyone, but especially for the injured - so he enforces brief but frequent water breaks. Sonny helps Clay take tiny sips, grinning every time Spenser, pained and cranky, glares at him in annoyance.

They traipse through the jungle for maybe two hours, terrain steep and woolly but not impassable, before things predictably start to go wrong.

First, Brock starts limping. Actually, he might have been limping to start with; Ray noticed that his gait was a little odd from the time they broke camp. Whatever the case, he eventually starts limping enough for it to be obvious, and Jason calls a halt as soon as they find a patch of relatively level ground.

Trent marches over. "What is it, and why didn't you tell us?"

Brock blinks at him. The hair missile handler is one of the quietest human beings Ray has ever met. It's not that he's shy, really; he just rarely talks unless something really needs to be said.

When Brock was a rookie, they drilled it into his head that injuries always counted as 'something that needed to be said.' After one memorable (and, for Brock, embarrassing) occasion where he collapsed on Jason after a mission, he has never, to Ray's knowledge, hidden an injury again.

Now, Brock looks confused and a little defensive. "It's a blister," he says, "and I didn't mention it because _it's_ _a blister."_

Trent sighs his 'I am surrounded by idiots' sigh. "No such thing as just a blister here. Show me."

Brock's 'just a blister' is oozing pus, and the side of his foot is swollen and angry red. He looks as shocked as everyone else when he sees it. "It wasn't bad this morning. Swear to God."

"Yeah, it can move fast _if not treated,"_ Trent says pointedly. Brock looks away, doesn't answer, and Trent blows out a breath. "Listen, I'm gonna clean it out and put you on topical and oral antibiotics, okay? I need the injectable ones for Ray."

Brock nods. Nobody bothers to mention that he has to keep walking for as long as he can, no matter how much it hurts - which Ray guesses is a lot - because having _three_ men down would make this journey damn near impossible.

Trent opens up the wound so it can drain, packs it with sulfa powder, and bandages it as well as he can. Brock manages to stay quiet, mostly, though he goes several shades paler.

Then, just as Trent is finishing up with Brock, Clay rolls his head to the side and pukes up the meager amount of water he has managed to drink over the past hour.

Trent swears quietly. He checks the elasticity of Clay's skin, mutters to himself, then sits back on his heels. "I'll need to start an IV if the nausea doesn't start getting better on its own."

It doesn't. Twenty minutes down the road, before they even have a chance to get Clay to try any more sips of water, he starts dry heaving again. Other than the puking, he doesn't make a sound; just presses shaking hands to his forehead, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to pant through what must be one hell of a headache.

"Let's get him somewhere level," Trent says, adjusting his grip on the litter. They've ascended a narrow eyebrow of a trail that clings to a hillside above a ravine. Despite the absence of rain so far today, the ground is slick and muddy, with little room for error. Ray's gut lurches every time someone's footing wavers. He tries not to let himself look down, over the side of the drop to the swift creek roaring through the bottom of the gorge.

They're headed downward through thinning trees, flatter ground finally in sight, when Trent's feet go out from under him and he falls.

He's in front and has the presence of mind to immediately let go of the litter. It's the only thing that keeps him from taking Clay, and probably Sonny, over the edge with him.

"SHIT!" Sonny yells, lunging forward to fling an arm around Clay, stop his slide toward the edge. "Trent! Jay, Trent's down!"

* * *

Jason is pouring all his focus into putting one foot in front of the other, gauging the distance left until they can leave the hillside behind. Every small slip in snot-slick mud makes him painfully aware of the sharp drop that looms to his right.

They just have to make it down from here, and then they can take a breather and Trent can get Clay's IV started.

Behind Jason, Ray makes a startled noise, and the litter shifts with his sudden movement. Sonny yells, "Jay, Trent's down!"

Jason reflexively tries to twist, look back, see what the hell is going on. His feet start to slide. He throws himself to the left, against the slimy, sheer hillside; behind him, feels Brock do the same. Ray yelps when the litter slams into the dirt, but it's better than going over the edge.

Like Trent.

Shit.

"Sonny, you good?" Jason yells back. "You got Clay?"

"Yeah, yeah! Get Trent!"

Hugging the hillside, Jason and Brock carry Ray the rest of the way down to level ground. They move as fast as they can, given Brock's bad foot and the slick mud, which is nowhere near fast enough for Jason's liking.

The slope Trent went down is mostly just steep dirt, some scattered plants. Maybe he just slid to the bottom. Maybe he's okay.

At the spot where the gulch gentles and widens out, Jason sets down the front of the litter, orders Brock to stay with Ray, and turns to head down the creek to look for their missing medic.

Trent is already walking upstream toward them. He's covered in mud and has his left arm held tight to his body, but he seems steady on his feet. The knot in Jason's chest eases. He takes his first full breath since hearing Sonny's yell.

Trent waves his good hand before Jason gets a chance to ask. "I'm good, boss. Nothing serious."

Jason looks pointedly at the arm. "Shoulder?"

Trent shakes his head, winces. "Think I cracked my collarbone."

He won't be able to use the arm much, then. That's inconvenient, but considering the distance he fell, the rocks in the creek at the bottom, it could be a damn sight worse.

Trent looks past Jason, a flash of panic crossing his face at who he doesn't see. "Sonny? Clay?"

Jason tips his head back toward the hillside above. "They're up there. Sonny's got him. I'll go bring them down if you're good."

"I'm good," Trent says firmly. When he lowers himself to sit next to Brock and Ray, his movements are stiff and careful. He's got to be bruised to hell, but if he says there's nothing more serious going on, Jason believes him.

They all rely on Trent, trust him to keep them stable, to get them home still breathing. When he's the one hurt, it throws the whole team off kilter.

Sonny is still sitting exactly where they left him, legs thrown across the abandoned litter, arms around Clay's chest to keep him from moving. He looks up when Jason approaches. "Trent?"

"Little banged up, but says he's okay."

Sonny exhales slowly, relief softening his face. "Good. Help me move the kid. He keeps trying to puke on me."

As soon as they get Clay down to level ground, Trent pushes himself up with a mostly-hidden grimace, mumbling something about an IV. Jason makes him sit back down until they can get a sling on his arm. The bruising over his collarbone is already spectacular, a deep blue-purple, but the bone doesn't seem to be out of place. About the best they can do for him out here is try to make sure that doesn't change.

By the time they manage to get Trent's arm stabilized, put Clay's IV in and give Ray his midday injection of antibiotics, the light has started dimming the way it does before a storm. Tension burns through Jason's shoulders. He has a feeling that the creek next to them won't stay manageable for long if it starts to rain hard enough.

He wonders if HAVOC's 'two days to reach the village' estimate took into account the fact that Bravo is largely at the mercy of the weather. If it rains enough, nearly every dip and gully will flood, and they'll have no choice but to hunker down, wait it out, and pray they don't run out of meds. Or get shot at again.

They get moving, managing to leave the creek behind before the rain starts. The storm lasts just long enough to soak everyone through; then the sun breaks back out and the temperature climbs. Clay is the only one who doesn't look absolutely miserable, and that's because whatever Trent put in that IV has knocked him out.

The sunlight is starting to slant toward evening when Bravo reaches a spine of cracked, tumbled boulders that block their path downriver. Were everyone able-bodied, they'd be able to find their way up and over. In the team's current state? Not a chance. They'll have to wait until morning, then scout for a break in the stone, a pass low enough to lift the injured through.

Finding the clearest, most leech-free area they can manage, the team settles down to make camp, falling into a sort of exhausted quiet.

Spenser has been silent for hours now. Jason, skin prickling with unease, keeps glancing over to make sure the kid is still breathing. He must not be the only one worried, because Trent scoots over, pulls out a penlight, shakes Clay's shoulder a little bit, and says, "Hey. I'm just gonna check your eyes, okay?"

Clay mumbles something. Moving sluggishly, he raises his hands to his face, fumbles around until he locates his eyes, and then resolutely covers them with his fingers.

Sonny barks a startled laugh. "Little shit. Guess that answers the question of whether he can hear you." He holds Spenser's wrists, ignoring the slurred medley of insults against his character, so that Trent can peel back Clay's eyelids and check his pupils one at a time.

"Well?" Jason asks.

Trent looks up. "No worse. No better either."

Spenser seems content to stay asleep on the litter, flat on his back, so they leave him there while they finish setting up camp, breaking out MREs, passing around water, helping Ray sit up so he can eat. Ray's color still hasn't returned to normal, but his temperature is staying down and his appetite is returning, which Jason figures are good signs.

As brief dusk settles over the camp, carrying with it a gentle hush, Jason starts to notice the sound of Clay's breathing. It isn't terrible, but there's still a hint of rasp to it, like when Mikey was little and used to get asthma during the winter sometimes.

Eventually, Sonny can't stand it anymore. He pulls the litter over next to a tree, sits against the trunk, and lifts Clay up so that he's mostly upright, head resting on Sonny's chest.

The Texan looks up and catches sight of Jason's smile. "What?" He asks defensively. "He can breathe better like this."

"Oh, nothing," Jason says. "I just remember when I thought you two might never learn to get along."

Sonny shrugs, as much as he can with Clay passed out on him. "Yeah, well. He grew on me. Like a damn fungus."

"Uh-huh."

Quinn takes a deep breath, his expression shifting. "I thought he was dead, Jace. I really did."

"I know, brother. Me too." Jason looks at Clay's face, smudged with dirt and blood. Even in his sleep, there are pain lines drawn around his eyes. "But we got him, and he's gonna be okay."

"Damn straight," Sonny says.

They manage to hang onto that optimism right up until the next morning, when Clay won't wake up.


	4. Chapter 4

Ray spikes another fever during the night. It breaks easily enough with ibuprofen, but Jason can tell Trent is worried by the fact that it has come back at all.

After Ray starts feeling better and goes back to sleep, Jason racks out for a while. He leaves Sonny on watch, but it's Trent who wakes him at first light, face grim and drawn.

_Ray_ is Jason's first sleep-muddled thought, but then Trent says softly, "Jace, it's Clay."

Jason jolts fully awake, heart rate rising. "Breathing?"

Trent nods. "Yeah. But unresponsive." He pushes himself up with a groan. All his bruises and strains have obviously stiffened up overnight, and now he looks like he can barely move.

Clay is still on the litter; Trent hadn't wanted him in a hammock, afraid he'd start throwing up, be unable to roll over, and choke. In the pale early dawn, he looks very young. His eyes are closed, breathing steady.

They just can't get him to respond. To anything.

Sonny sits next to Clay, hand on the kid's shoulder. He must have gotten worried and gone to get Trent when he couldn't get a response out of Spenser. Probably figured Trent would know some way to get Clay to open his eyes.

"What's our most likely scenario here?" Jason manages to keep his tone even, like he's talking about the weather, not about maybe watching a man's life slowly fade away right in front of him. A _brother's _life.

Trent rubs at his chin, expression bleak. "That's the thing. I don't - I can't _know. _He needs scans and tests. A hospital. A neurologist."

"I understand that," Jason says. "Just … your best guess, okay? How bad off is he?"

"His pupils are sluggish but still reactive. Reflexes seem okay. I just can't get him to wake up." Trent shrugs without thinking, then goes still and pale when the motion jars his collarbone.

"Okay, and what does that _mean?" _Jason thinks he's managing admirable patience, considering the circumstances.

"It means…" Trent looks away. His voice hitches. "It _means_ that if we got him to a hospital right the hell now, he might still recover. We might still get him back. But we can't do that, can we? We can just watch-"

He cuts off, turns away and doesn't say anything else for a while.

Sonny doesn't move from his spot by Clay's shoulder. "He got any chance at all?" He finally asks hoarsely. "Trent?"

Trent gathers himself and turns back. "I don't know, okay? Maybe. Head injuries can be unpredictable. Maybe he'll wake back up and be fine. Maybe he'll have some memory loss. Maybe he won't wake up at all."

He doesn't mention the myriad of other possible outcomes: hemiparesis; aphasia; loss of fine motor skills, and impulse control, and emotional regulation.

Jason has been in this line of work long enough, seen enough brain injuries, to conjure up a dozen scenarios in which Spenser goes on breathing, but they still don't get him back. Not the Clay they know. Not the Clay who can go on being a member of Bravo; the cocky kid who is supposed to lead his own team one day.

Jason calls in to HAVOC. It's unlikely they can actually do anything, but he should at least let them know. When Blackburn responds, Jason lays it out plainly: "Bravo Six's condition is deteriorating. He's unresponsive. Might not have long."

It takes Blackburn a minute to answer. When he does, he just says, "_Copy, Bravo One."_ There's another pause, and then he adds, "_Wanted you to know we've had our assets scouring the bigger towns downriver, looking for any locals who might be able to pilot a boat up there. Haven't been able to find a one."_

"Huh," Jason says. "That normal?"

"_Negative."_

From an objective standpoint, it's not like Jason can blame the locals for disappearing en masse into the jungle as soon as they realized Bakar Abdhir was aware they'd tried to help the U.S. military assassinate him. It's just that objectivity is a little difficult to maintain while Jason is having to watch one of his brothers slowly die because they can't get him to a goddamn hospital.

"You're absolutely sure you can't get a boat up here anyway?" He asks, though he already knows the answer; if it were possible, they would have done it.

It's Mandy who responds this time. "_Unfortunately, yes. Anyone we tried to send up would just end up needing rescue as well. If they survived."_

"Understood."

The only thing they can do for Clay is try to get him the hell out of here, so they get moving again as soon as it's fully light. Ray is alert enough to chafe at being a burden, but not well enough to walk far; the fever has left him so washed out that his arm shakes when he lifts the canteen to his mouth.

As for the others, Brock is still limping, but at least doesn't seem worse than he was the previous evening. Trent is obviously sore and has to carry his end of Clay's litter with just one hand, which must be exhausting, but he doesn't complain. Only Sonny and Jason are anything close to able-bodied; covered in bites and reeking to high heaven, but reasonably healthy, all things considered.

Contemplating the looming spine of rock, Jason decides to head uphill first, away from the river, given that there's less likelihood of getting ambushed in that direction. It takes maybe half an hour before they find a gap that they can pass the litters through. It's an awkward process, and Brock hangs his bad foot on a rock and nearly falls, but they make it.

Overhead, through the branches of thinning trees, the sky is a brilliant blue, as clear and cloud-free as Jason has seen it here. In the absence of rain, the day grows intolerably hot and muggy. They continue downriver, sometimes having to track upland or downland to avoid cliffs or find shallow spots to cross creeks, but making decent progress.

By midday, the terrain starts to become less steep and the towering rainforest begins to give way to patchy, brushy regrowth on hillsides that must have served as rice fields in the recent past. It's a mixed blessing. The landscape is less punishing and easier to navigate, but it's harder for Bravo to maintain cover, and out from under the canopy, the equatorial sun is absolutely brutal.

Finding a dense patch of trees, Jason calls a halt and they sit in the shade, sweat-soaked and exhausted. Trent's good hand won't stop trembling. Ray doesn't have a fever, but his skin looks grayish, he keeps falling asleep, and he silently shakes his head when Jason tries to convince him to eat something.

Clay breathes but doesn't wake up.

Brock props up his foot with a grimace, pulls up his pant leg, and reveals a red streak climbing his ankle. "Well, shit," he says dully.

Trent rubs his face, opens his med bag, and stares in quiet despair at what he sees there. Jason knows that he's used up most of his supply of injectable antibiotics.

Brock tugs the fabric back down and leans forward. "Hey, it's probably not that bad. Right? Trent?"

Trent just shakes his head, tosses Brock another bottle of oral antibiotics, tells him to take two and drink as much water as he can manage. Then Trent digs up a pen from somewhere and marks the scope of the infection so they'll know if it gets worse.

When, Jason thinks wearily. So they'll know _when_ it gets worse.

They hydrate, force themselves to eat a little despite the heat-induced queasiness, and adjust hats and sleeves to make sure their skin is shielded from the sun. Trent rubs his knuckles over Clay's sternum, again, then leans forward and briefly rests his forehead on the back of his hand when he doesn't get a response.

Despite their injuries, despite the vicious heat and the sun that reddens exposed skin almost instantly, and despite nearly losing Sonny to a heart attack when a centipede crawls across his boot, Bravo makes reasonably good time for the rest of the day. When the light dims with evening, Jason picks their campsite for the night: a sheltered spot above a small creek. They're running low on water.

HAVOC says, barring further complications, Bravo should reach the village no later than midday tomorrow. Jason sits at the edge of camp, watches an ashen, silent Clay breathe, listens to Brock's muted groans as Trent opens up the abscess on his foot, and wonders if that will be soon enough.

At least Ray seems a bit better. After the sun drops and the air sweetens with a faint breeze off the creek, he feels well enough to sit up and even eat a little. He spends a lot of time watching Clay. Jason notices that they all do. Their eyes keep straying back to their youngest team member, like his fading silence has left a hole in the world that's trying to drag the entire team into it.

As darkness falls over the camp, the members of Bravo start to filter tiredly into their hammocks. Sonny wanders over to sit by Clay, using a piece of damp gauze to wipe some of the dirt and blood from the younger man's face. Jason is just close enough to hear him saying softly, "Come on, Spenser. You don't get to do this. You made it out of that goddamn river, and we _found_ you, and you don't get to go and die anyway. Wake the hell up, Clay. Please."

Spenser lies still and silent. After a while, Sonny goes to his hammock.

* * *

Ray sleeps deeply, then blinks awake in the pale, clammy dawn. There's a riot of birdsong, and monkeys are clamoring somewhere far off, maybe down closer to the river. Ray feels okay, all things considered; the pain in his side is ever-present, but dulled. He's achy and gnawingly restless and still too weak to do anything about it. He lies still for a while, staring up at a brightly colored lizard in the tree overhead.

Eventually, Ray looks across the camp. Jason is on watch, sitting with his back to the others, face turned toward the racket the monkeys are making. Ray reads tension in his posture; he's probably wondering if the monkeys are upset at something, or someone, in particular.

Behind Jason, on the litter, Clay Spenser is lying on his back, eyes wide open, staring straight up at the sky.

Ray's heart tries to rocket out of his chest. He struggles to sit up. "Clay? Clay!"

Jason nearly turns through himself, sees Spenser's staring eyes, and lunges forward to press his fingers against the kid's carotid.

Clay blinks. Tries to lick dry lips, winces, and manages to focus on Jason's face. "Boss?" His voice comes out as a cracked whisper.

Jason pats Clay's shoulder. His voice is not quite steady when he says, "Yeah, kid, it's me. You're okay."

By now, the entire camp is awake. Sonny nearly goes ass over teakettle trying to get out of his hammock. Finally making it to Clay's side, he breathes, "Holy shit, Blondie. You scared the hell out of us."

"Sorry," Clay whispers. "Wha'd I do?"

"You stopped waking up."

"Oh." He thinks about that for a minute, then concludes: "Tired."

Sonny laughs. "I guess you were."

"Hey." Trent pats Spenser's hand to get his attention. "Can you tell me your-"

The kid heaves a put-upon sigh that turns into a dry cough. After Sonny helps him take a sip of water, he manages to say, "I'm Clay. You're Trent. This is Sonny. That's Jason." His eyes snap open when he realizes there are names missing from that list, and he struggles to sit up. "Brock? Ray?"

"Hey, whoa, stay down," Trent says. "They're right over there. A little gimpy, but they'll be fine."

Spenser nods, lips pressed together. There's fresh sweat on his forehead, and his complexion looks a little green. He clearly regrets moving.

Trent sighs. "I was going to try to get you to drink some more water, but it looks like we're gonna have to wait on that. Stay as still as you can, okay?"

"Copy that," Clay says, barely moving his lips.

After a while, Spenser's color improves and the nausea seems to abate. Ray eases himself up into a sitting position and watches as Sonny carefully lifts Clay's head and helps him drink. At some point, without the rest of the team noticing, Sonny has apparently transformed into the Spenser whisperer. Who would have predicted _that._

When Sonny sets the water aside and starts to leave to help pack up the camp, Clay latches onto his sleeve. "Wait," he says, in a voice that's somewhat stronger but still cracked and hoarse. He holds up both hands and looks at Sonny expectantly. After a second of confusion, Sonny reaches out and takes them. Clay squeezes as hard as he can.

To Sonny's credit, it doesn't take him more than a couple seconds to school his expression, but Ray knows him well enough to recognize the sharp flicker of concern.

"Hey, it's probably nothin' to worry about," Sonny says. "You're gonna be okay."

"Sure about that?" Clay tries for a smile that wobbles and collapses.

Sonny just pats his shoulder and goes to get Trent, who comes back over immediately and starts checking reflexes and pupils again; telling Spenser to smile, raise his arms. The medic wears a damnably inscrutable expression the whole time. Eventually, he declares that Clay will probably be fine. Clay visibly disbelieves that, but just shakes his head a little and goes quiet.

Trent huddles with Sonny and Jason, talking too quietly for anyone else to hear. Ray waits until one of them, Sonny, comes close enough to have a private conversation with, then asks, "What's going on?"

Sonny doesn't meet his gaze. "Ah, Clay's got weakness on his left side."

Ray exhales slowly. "Trent say what he thinks it means?"

"Figures he's got a slow bleed, maybe, but him being awake and coherent is a good sign. Means it might be resolving on its own." He looks down at his hands. "Long-term, well, he says it's hard to tell. Might get better. Might not."

Ray nods. A scenario where Spenser remains alive is better than what he expected when he went to sleep last night. He tries to hang onto that, but can't quite jettison the thought that never getting to be an operator again would absolutely destroy Clay. The kid has stripped everything else out of his life. They should have tried harder to convince him not to do that.

Not that it would have worked. Spenser is nothing if not a bullheaded little shit.

Oddly enough, it's that thought that makes Ray feel a little better. If anybody can conquer brain damage through the power of sheer stubbornness, it will be Clay Spenser. In that way, and several others, he is much like a younger Jason. How the hell did Ray manage to anger God enough to end up on a team with _two_ of them?

* * *

Hayes's call, when it comes in, isn't what Blackburn was expecting.

He's spent hours wondering how long it will be until Spenser stops breathing and they have to start planning his funeral (while hoping it's the _only_ funeral they'll be planning).

Instead, Hayes reports that Bravo Six is awake and talking. He's also showing signs of a possible brain injury, but the important part is that he's alive and seems likely to remain that way. Assuming he avoids further harm, of course, which brings Eric to the conversation he's been putting off in hopes of at least having some good news to temper the bad news.

"Bravo One, we've got to consider the possibility that this village is going to be abandoned when you reach it."

Hayes is silent for a minute. "_Can you confirm with ISR?"_

"Canopy's pretty thick over the houses," Eric says. The locals might have cleared many of the surrounding hillsides, but they wisely left their own village shaded from the sun. "No signs of movement in the surrounding area, though, and the river has been clear of traffic. Based on the absence of locals everywhere else we've looked…"

"_They're gone,"_ Hayes says flatly. "_We're not gonna find anybody. Or at least not anybody we want to find."_

"That would be our belief, yes." Now the good news: "We've been able to come up with an alternate exfil plan that we think will work. There's a road leading away from the village."

"_A road? How come we didn't know about this sooner?"_

Davis jumps in to explain. "Because that village is as far upriver as the road goes, and it's only passable during dry season. Barely maintained, and usually flooded the rest of the year. Even with less rain than usual these past few days, you probably wouldn't be able to make it more than halfway to the next village on the route."

"_So how does this help us?"_ Hayes sounds impatient.

"It helps you," Eric says, "because the road takes the most direct path out of the mountains. You make it just a quarter of the way to the next village, and there will be fields. Valleys wide enough and clearings big enough to put down a helo in."

"_Copy that. Can you have a med team meet us?"_

"We're … working on that," Eric hedges. By 'we' he mostly means Mandy. Navigating local politics has been a bitch; it was like pulling teeth to get the mission approved in the first place, and everything was supposed to stay as quiet as possible. No helos, only boats. Mandy is trying very hard to sell the idea that landing a helo in an empty field by an abandoned road is unlikely to draw attention. It remains to be seen whether she'll succeed.

When Hayes doesn't respond to that, Blackburn moves on. "We believe there are a few trucks kept somewhere in the village. You'll need one. You've got a lot of ground to cover." It's a good 30 klicks minimum to the closest potential LZ. In their current condition, that's not a journey Eric feels optimistic Bravo could make on foot. Not without somebody collapsing from heat exhaustion.

"_Roger that,"_ Hayes responds.

He checks back in again a few hours later, reporting that they're approaching the village. It's quiet. No sign of movement. Their plan is to get in, find a truck, get it running, and move out ASAP.

It's Quinn who calls in just a few minutes later, breathless, voice unsteady. "_Ah, HAVOC, be advised, we've got contact. There's-"_

He cuts off.

Eric and Mandy look at each other. "Bravo Three, status?"

Nothing.

"Bravo Three? Bravo One, sitrep?"

Quinn comes back, even more out of breath. "_Not sure how many tangos, but they were waitin' for us at - JASON! GRENADE!"_

A blast crackles through the connection.

Then there's only silence.


	5. Chapter 5

They don't even make it halfway through the village before everything goes soundly to shit.

Really, things start going to shit even before that. They're maybe 30 mikes out from the village when Brock's condition heads downhill a lot faster than anyone expected.

It starts with his breathing. They're all tired, all maybe panting a little in the heat, but Brock's breathing starts to take on a disconcerting wheezing sound. Soon after, he's tripping over every vine and branch in his path. Jason glances over to find that Brock's skin has gone the color of ashes.

With an internal sigh, because what the fuck _else_ can go wrong, Jason halts his team in the shade of a lone, massive tree. "Trent," he says, tipping his head toward Brock, who looks dazed and is wavering in place.

The medic touches Brock's face and swears softly.

Jason's heart drops. "Fever?"

"Yeah. Pretty high." Trent pulls up Brock's pant leg, hissing sharply when he sees the red-streaked, swollen ankle puffed out over the top of the boot. "_Jesus_. Why didn't you say something?"

Brock shrugs and nearly falls over. Sonny appears at his side and slides an arm around his shoulders, guiding him to sit.

"It only hurts when my heart beats," Brock jokes weakly.

Trent doesn't look up from trying, without much success, to work the boot off Brock's swollen foot. "It's not funny. You know better than-"

Brock winces, sucks in air through gritted teeth, then says softly, "Trent. There's nothing you can really do for me right now. Is there?"

Trent stops. Takes his hand away from the boot and just stares at the ground for a minute.

"It's okay." Brock is trying hard to sound confident. "We're about to get out of here, right? I can hold out till then."

Trent shakes his head, blows out a slow breath, then finally nods, because what else is he going to do? He gives Brock pain meds, ibuprofen for the fever, water to stave off dehydration, and they get back on the move. Somehow, possibly out of pure stubbornness alone, Brock stays on his feet until they reach the village.

The area is eerily silent, even the jungle sounds receding as they approach. Jason's skin prickles.

"Jace," Sonny says softly, "I don't like this."

Jason shakes his head. "Yeah, me either."

Spenser and Ray aren't ambulatory, Brock barely is, and Trent is stiff and sore and can only use one arm. After some consideration, Jason decides to leave the injured under cover, take Sonny, and try to clear the village.

In the jungle's oppressive heat, they've all long since stripped off their tac gear. Jason puts his vest back on and orders Sonny to do the same. The fact that the Texan doesn't complain speaks volumes about his feelings regarding how much danger they're about to be in.

It takes about three minutes for things to go bad.

The village is labyrinthine. Stilt houses crowd closely together beneath spreading trees, providing an uncomfortable quantity and variety of places someone could be hiding. It's hellishly difficult to clear them all.

Gun up, Jason eases around the corner of a house, spots two trucks parked under a rustic shed at the end of a cracked sidewalk, breathes a sigh of relief, and gets punched in the chest.

He blinks and he's on the ground. He can't breathe. Dirt kicks up, sprays across his face.

"JASON!" Sonny is yelling, somewhere in the distance, back in the world where there's air.

A hand grabs the back of Jason's vest, drags him back under cover. The movement startles him into gasping a breath that burns like fire.

"Jace, come on," Sonny says. There's an edge of raw fear in his voice. He looks up, fires; looks down, shoves a hand under Jason's vest, and exhales sharply when he doesn't find blood. "You're good, boss. You're good. It didn't go through."

Jason doesn't _feel_ 'good,' but he can breathe now, more or less, and he has a job to do. Bracing against the pain in his ribs, he reaches for his radio. It's shattered.

"Damn," he mutters, then adds, louder, "Son, call it in. My radio's toast."

Sonny gets a few words into reporting the situation before a bullet sprays wood chips into his cheek. He yelps and hits the deck. "Shit!"

Jason pushes himself up, finds the tango crouched on an opposing rooftop, takes him out. "How many left?"

"I don't know!" Sonny yells back, ducking, firing, reloading. He gets back on the radio with HAVOC.

An instant later, something clinks in the dirt, rolls under the house they've been sheltering behind.

"JASON! GRENADE!"

Jason lunges, dives, rolls as far away as he can before the world dissolves into heat and splintered wood. He comes back to himself seconds later, ears ringing, vision blurred. Sonny is on the ground nearby, motionless.

If they don't move, they're dead.

Staying low, Jason crawls through damp, churned-up dirt until he's close enough to shake Sonny's shoulder. Quinn groans and rolls his head to the side. There's a sizable chunk of wood protruding from his upper arm.

"Son, we've gotta move." Jason's voice sounds blurry and distorted to his own ears. "Sonny, come on. Bravo Three, get up!"

Sonny tries. He shakes his head to clear it, pushes himself up, wobbles and falls back down to an elbow.

At the sound of gunfire, Jason throws himself flat, pulling Sonny down with him, but it isn't aimed at them - and an HK416 answers.

Goddammit. He told them to stay put.

Granted, if they had, he and Sonny would probably already be dead.

As the firefight continues, Jason gets himself under the nearest unexploded house, hauling a dazed Sonny with him. Quinn seems to be coming around, though he's pale and hisses through his teeth every time his arm gets jarred.

"Stay here," Jason orders, reloading. Whichever of his boys drew the tangos off, he's not letting them go without backup.

"Like hell!" Sonny pushes to his feet, steadies himself, sets his jaw. "I'm fine, boss. I'm good."

"You got some house sticking out of your arm there, Bravo Three."

"Can still pull a trigger just fine," Sonny says obstinately.

Jason sighs. "Fine." Truth be told, cover or no cover, he didn't much want to leave Sonny alone anyhow.

They approach from the rear, take out one tango just as their unknown teammate eliminates another, and then there's ringing silence.

"We clear?" Jason calls.

"Think so," Trent responds, cautiously poking out from behind a bullet-chewed house. He's taken his arm out of its sling and is pale and obviously in pain, but Jason can't see any blood. He's torn between thanking Trent for possibly saving their lives, and being annoyed at him for not staying put with the others, for firing an HK416 with a damn cracked collarbone.

Before Jason can decide what he wants to say, Sonny touches his ear, then swears. "Shit. My radio's gone. Must've lost it in the blast. Trent, you better let HAVOC know we ain't all dead."

After Trent calls in to give Blackburn a sitrep, they return to where they left the others. Brock is burning up, ghost-pale except for crimson spots over his cheekbones. Putting weight on his foot is clearly agonizing, but he insists he can walk as far as the truck.

When Trent gently jostles Ray's shoulder in hopes of getting him to drink something, Ray's eyelids flutter but he doesn't wake up. Worry hits Jason like another bullet to the chest. "Trent?" He asks, more sharply than he'd intended.

The medic looks up, eyes hollow and tired. "He's not running a fever, but he's really dehydrated."

There are no more IV fluids. They long since used them all up on Clay while he was unconscious.

As for Spenser, he's awake, more or less, but out of it. When Sonny tries to talk to him, he just blinks a few times and mumbles something about a headache.

Despite the chunk of wood in Sonny's arm, and despite Jason's likely cracked ribs, they're still the two most able-bodied members of Bravo. This close to the village, the ground is level enough to drag the litters without jostling their occupants too much, so Jason takes Ray and Sonny takes Spenser, while Trent and Brock just sort of lean on each other.

They're almost to the trucks when a teenager with an AK pops up on a rooftop and starts screaming at them.

Jason jolts to a dead stop, heart rate skyrocketing. The kid is speaking the national language, which none of them understand. Got to be some local muscle Abdhir pulled in to complement his own guys; young, not well trained, and clearly in way over his head.

The tango swings the barrel back and forth wildly, trying to cover them all. His finger is on the trigger, voice verging on panic.

He's going to shoot them - whether intentionally or by accident.

Jason's hand twitches, but he knows raising his gun will set the kid off, and they won't be able to take him down before he can get one or more of them. Everything slows down, the world narrowing to the tango's panic, his finger on the trigger, the inevitability of the bullets.

The kid yells, voice cracking. Gestures with the gun barrel, jerking it up toward the sky, just for an instant.

There's a single shot. As one, Bravo flinches. The tango falls back, AK dropping from his hands. He rolls a little, then goes still and doesn't move again.

Behind Sonny, Clay is sitting up on the litter, shaking. He lowers his Glock.

"What the _hell?"_ Sonny breathes.

"Wasn't watching me and Ray," Spenser says, voice a little slurred. "And my right hand still works." He starts to fall sideways. Sonny lunges to catch him, lowers him back down gently, then groans a little because that definitely jarred his injured arm.

After that, they get their asses into the truck as fast as they can. Jason is expecting some kind of problem to arise, because at this point why wouldn't it, but there's a full gas can nearby and the truck starts right up after they fill the tank.

They load their casualties into the truck bed, which basically just consists of some boards. Jason drives. Sonny rides shotgun, staying alert in case of trouble. From time to time, he glances back to check on the injured, reporting what he sees: Ray is still out; Brock has joined him; Spenser has started throwing up.

The road is every bit as bad as expected, rough as a washboard and mostly grown over in places. Progress is painfully slow. Jason has to ease down to a crawl for some of the worst ruts; in other places, streams cross the road, creating a mess of soupy mud that sucks at the tires. In the back, Trent ends up using his good arm plus both legs to try to keep Brock, Ray and Spenser from bouncing around too much.

They make it maybe halfway to the LZ before rain starts coming down like a waterfall.

Jason hears a muffled yell from the back, hears Trent start scrambling around to try to shield his patients from the downpour. He sends Sonny back to help.

At this point, Jason wouldn't even be surprised if one of them survived all this bullshit, only to drown in the back of a truck on the way to extraction.

He keeps going for as long as he can, slow and careful, trying to make sure he doesn't drive into any serious flooding. It's hard to gauge the depth of the water on the road - and the depth of the mud that might lie beneath it.

Inevitably, he gets utterly, irrevocably stuck.

Jason turns off the truck. He listens to rain pounding on the metal over his head. He reaches for the radio he took off Ray.

"HAVOC, this is Bravo One. We're stuck. Not in immediate danger, but not going any farther."

"_Good copy, Bravo One," _Blackburn responds calmly. "_Hang in there. We'll get you out."_

Jason acknowledges, then leans his head back against the tattered, uncomfortable seat. His ribs throb. He feels like he hasn't slept in a month. He feels _old._

After a while, the rain slows, and little patches of blue start to peek through gunmetal-gray clouds. By the time the sun comes all the way back out, the med team has arrived with stretchers to carry Bravo home.

* * *

As soon as Ray is given permission to get out of bed, he starts hanging out in Spenser's room.

It's not like there's much to do in there. Clay spends most of his time sleeping, and even when he's awake, he's usually pretty out of it. His teammates stay with him around the clock anyway; they want him to know he's not alone. Also, given that Ray's nightmares lately have heavily featured Spenser getting shot in the head and plunging into the river, it calms him just being able to watch the kid breathe.

Bravo Team won't be going back in the field for a while. Brock won't lose his foot - though there was some question at first - but he'll need time to recover. Jason has broken ribs, Sonny is concussed and had to have surgery to remove a bunch of wood from his arm, and Trent won't be doing much until his collarbone heals.

All told, Ray is actually in better shape than most of them. Nothing is broken, and with the infection cleared up, his through-and-through should heal up nicely.

As for Spenser, well, Trent's educated guess turned out to be correct. Clay had a minor bleed that resolved on its own, meaning surgery wasn't required. In terms of recovery, though, there's an uncomfortable amount of Clay's future still up in the air.

Will the weakness in his left side fully resolve? Maybe, with time and physical therapy.

Will he ever remember the mission and the week or so prior? Most likely not much of it, but the doctors believe his ability to form new memories won't be affected going forward. There will just be a blank space surrounding the head injury.

Maybe that's not entirely a bad thing, Ray thinks, watching the kid's chest rise and fall. The mission kind of sucked. Okay, it _really_ sucked.

Plus, if Clay remembered the part about eliminating the tango who was about to shoot them all, he would never let his team hear the end of it. Last thing that kid needs is a bigger ego.

The door eases open. Ray glances up to see Trent, who is wearing a sling and an exhausted expression. Ray is pretty sure he hasn't been sleeping as much as he should, even though his teammates' lives are no longer in his hands.

Trent eases himself down into the chair next to Ray. "Has he been awake at all?"

Ray grins. "Woke up, looked at me, said 'Oh,' rolled over, and went back to sleep. Not sure exactly what I'm supposed to make of that."

Trent's return smile doesn't quite touch his eyes. Jesus, he looks tired. Ray leans forward and softens his voice. "You good, brother?"

Trent looks down, picks at the edge of his sling. "Guess things just got a little too close this time. It's my job to keep everybody stable, and-"

"Trent." Ray puts some steel in his tone. "If there is one thing I know for sure about that godforsaken mission, it is that half of us probably wouldn't have made it out if it wasn't for you."

Trent ducks his head. Doesn't answer.

"Listen to me. If you hadn't thought to bring those extra antibiotics, I'd be dead. Hell, Brock probably would be too. You kept Clay alive in the jungle heat when he wasn't conscious to take a sip of water for a full day. All of us being here now? Man, it's something close to a damn _miracle._ And a big part of that is you."

Trent clears his throat. After a minute, he says quietly, "Thanks."

"Just the truth, brother."

It's getting late, and the hospital is quiet. A sort of peace settles over them. Right now, for the moment, all of Bravo is safe and cared for. No one in danger. No one dying.

Ray sits next to the brother who saved his life, and he watches his youngest teammate breathe steady and strong, and he says his first prayer since the riverside:

_Thank you._

* * *

For those of you who have stuck with me this whole way: Thank you! I genuinely hope you enjoyed. There should be a short epilogue coming in the next few days.


	6. Epilogue

Before the briefing begins, the elite operators that compose Bravo Team file into the room with all the grace and dignity of a gaggle of 10-year-olds.

Blackburn watches them and manages to keep his smile internal. The last thing they need is encouragement.

They settle at the table, still bickering about something or another, and Eric's gaze automatically goes to the empty seat where Spenser should be. No one mentions him, but they don't need to for his absence to hang heavy over the room.

It reminds Blackburn of the days after they lost Nate; of how the hole in the world where he had been followed them everywhere for a while. In briefings, Eric's ears used to ring with the silence that filled the places where Nate would have commented or contributed.

He gets a little stab of old, well-worn grief when he realizes that stopped happening somewhere along the way, and he didn't even notice when it did.

Then he reminds himself that this isn't like that. Grief doesn't apply here, because Spenser is very much alive. That kid might be too stubborn to _ever _die.

At Eric's side, Mandy starts talking, laying out the basic framework of the upcoming mission. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with Bakar Abdhir; he has once again disappeared off the face of the planet. Mandy swears she'll find him. Blackburn tries to believe her. He does know one thing: if _anyone _can find the bastard, it will be Mandy Ellis.

Once Mandy has finished her short mission summary, she glances over at Blackburn, which is his cue. "Y'all'll be needing a sixth man for this mission."

That gets the reaction he expected: shifty eyes, shuffling. Bravo is absolutely united in their rejection of anything that might resemble even hinting at replacing Spenser.

"We can take Kairos," Jason says, then looks almost comically betrayed when Blackburn immediately shakes his head.

"Afraid not. The guy has already been chosen. It's out of your hands." He tips his head toward the back of the room, where Bravo's sixth man has managed to slip in without notice.

There's an instant of shock as it sinks in. Then the room dissolves into chaos as Bravo Team, all talking at once, leave their chairs to surround a sheepishly smiling Clay Spenser.

After Spenser has endured the requisite series of bone-cracking hugs, Hayes stands in front of him, hands on his shoulders, and looks intently into his face. "You good, Bravo Six?"

"Good as new, boss." Spenser sounds cocky as ever, and his smile doesn't droop on the left, not even a little bit.

Hayes nods, claps him on the arm, swallows back a flicker of emotion, and turns to Eric and Mandy with a raised eyebrow. "You could have just told me he was cleared for duty. Were the theatrics really necessary?"

"No," Mandy says cheerfully. "But we _really _enjoyed them."

Hayes gives her a look that's probably meant to be exasperated, but the glimmer of a smile kind of ruins it.

Once things settle back down, Ellis starts going into detail on the mission and what it will entail. Blackburn stands next to her and lets his gaze travel around the room, from one face to another … everyone right where they should be.

* * *

The end, for real this time. Thank you all so much for sticking with me and leaving so many nice reviews.


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